1. Hossein Derakhshan, known as Hoder, is an Iranian-Canadian blogger, journalist, and researcher who was imprisoned in Tehran from November 2008 to November 2014.
26 Facts About Hossein Derakhshan
1. 2.
Hossein Derakhshan is credited with starting the blogging revolution in Iran and is called the father of Persian blogging by many journalists.
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Hossein Derakhshan's sentence was reduced to 17 years in October 2013.
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Hossein Derakhshan was pardoned by Iran's supreme leader and on November 19,2014, was released from Evin prison.
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Hossein Derakhshan started his education in Nikan High School in Tehran.
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Hossein Derakhshan has a bachelor's degree in sociology from Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran.
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Hossein Derakhshan spent time studying sociology at the University of Toronto.
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Hossein Derakhshan holds a master's degree in Film and Media Studies from SOAS, University of London, 2008.
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Hossein Derakhshan started out as a journalist writing about Internet and digital culture for reformist newspaper, Asr-e Azadegan in 1999.
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Hossein Derakhshan later moved his manually maintained weblog to Blogger.
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Hossein Derakhshan prepared a step-by-step guide in Persian on how other Persian writers can start their weblogs using Blogger.
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Hossein Derakhshan spoke at the Wikimania 2005 conference in Frankfurt, Germany regarding the complementary use of wikis and blogs to aid political reform and the growth of democracy in Iran and other countries.
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Hossein Derakhshan appeared a few times on a VOA Persian TV show to talk about Internet censorship and methods to get around filters.
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Hossein Derakhshan visited Israel as a Canadian citizen in early 2006 and early 2007.
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Hossein Derakhshan's second visit was to participate in a conference at The Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva.
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Hossein Derakhshan's visits were widely covered by the local and international media, including Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Ynet News, Ha'ir, Time Out Tel Aviv, Israeli Radio and its Persian service, Israel's English TV news, New York Times, BBC, etc.
17.
On November 1,2008, Hossein Derakhshan was arrested at his family home in Tehran.
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Jamshidi said that Hossein Derakhshan was in the custody of the Islamic Revolutionary Court and his case was in early discovery phase, and that among Hossein Derakhshan's accusations is what he had written about the "Pure Imams".
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The brother said that at the dinner, Hossein confirmed human rights activists' reports claiming Derakhshan had been subject to physical and psychological pressures such as being forced to do squats in cold showers, receiving repeated beatings, being subject to solitary confinedment, beatings, threats to arrest family members, and false promises of his release, in an effort to secure a confession to espionage charges.
20.
On May 6,2011, Hossein Derakhshan updated his Facebook profile and photos, and added a one line status update of "On a very short leave from Evin".
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In June 2011, Hossein Derakhshan's family said that the Iranian appeals court has upheld his conviction.
22.
In October 2013, Hossein Derakhshan's sentence was reduced from 19.5 years to 17 years, as a result of the Supreme Leader's pardoning for Eid al-Fitr.
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Hossein Derakhshan was pardoned by the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei in 2014 and freed from prison on November 19,2014.
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Hossein Derakhshan has continued writing and speaking about socio-political implications of social media and the future of journalism.
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Hossein Derakhshan received a research fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center in Spring 2018.
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Hossein Derakhshan has co-authored a few opinion pieces about information disorder with Wardle.